BJKS Podcast

103. Brandon Brown: Farms not grants, academic negotiations, and unusual academic contributions

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Brandon Brown is a professor at University of California Riverside, where he studies global health and ethics. He also writes career columns for Nature and Science, which we talk about: negotiations in academia, his sabbatical, his life owning and working a farm, different types of grants and contributions in academia, and much more

BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.

Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon

Timestamps
0:00:00: Brandon's path to becoming a scientist
0:20:39: Start discussing Brandon's career columns in Nature
0:32:17: Grant applications: small vs. big
0:41:36: Postdoc-phase: is my plan crazy?
0:55:32: Different types of contribution/recognition in academia
1:09:22: Negotiation in academia
1:22:47: Contributing to team science
1:30:30: Sabbaticals
1:39:19: Brandon's farm
1:48:15: A book or paper more people should read
1:49:33: Something Brandon wishes he'd learnt sooner
1:51:43: Advice for PhD students/postdocs

Podcast links


Brandon's links


Ben's links


References and links

CAMP: https://www.campstatewide.org/
truEvolution: https://www.truevolution.org/

Brandon's columns (most of which we discussed):
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02390-w
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03184-8
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00381-5
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.364.6447.1306
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.372.6548.1358

Coelho (1988). The Alchemist.

[This is an automated transcript that contains many errors]

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: [00:00:00] I'm glad you, you, you still accepted my email invitation when I asked whether I could interview you about not having grants, but on a farm. Um, because it's effectively, I guess that is what we'll be talking about. How you, you know, you don't have big grants, but you have a farm instead.

Brandon Brown: Yep, trade off.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: yeah, I mean, as, as we're talking about, it's, uh, it seems to be a conscious choice, but I was curious, I mean, so basically, I thought we could maybe, I mean how I often do it, start in a kind of biographical sense to like a rough story of how people got what they're doing and I thought in your case it might make sense also because from what I understand you are, as we'll get to later in more detail, um, involved in some non profits, if that's the correct term, and I think one of them in particular is one that you profited from when you were younger.

Um, from what I understand you, I think you wrote somewhere that you were a, a, uh, Not profiteur, that's, that's the [00:01:00] wrong word, but you profited from the, I think the California Alliance for Minority Participation, something like that. So I thought we could maybe, uh, go through your, your, your career a little bit, um, to kind of maybe also understand a little bit more why you're doing what you're doing.

I mean, yeah, maybe it's very broadly and you can kind of take this up wherever you want to, but like, what was your, when did you become interested in doing science for career?

Brandon Brown: Yeah, that's, I mean that's a great question. One of the things that I, um, that sometimes I tell my students is that I actually, I never wanted to go to college when I was younger and I didn't think that I would get in. Um,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Why not?

Brandon Brown: Um, like a lot of students here and probably in other places, um, I'm a, I'm a first generation student.

My, my mom graduated high school, but my, um, my father didn't. So I didn't know about the process or what it could be or what it could do and how it could kind of, uh, [00:02:00] benefit me. I actually wanted to be a personal trainer and a taekwondo instructor, but my, my mom forced me to apply to college. And of course, I'm forever thankful to her for that, because, um, that's why I am here where I am today.

And the story about kind of like camp, the California Alliance for Minority Participation, I had actually submitted my intent to register at one university, and I had planned to go to that college. After I got in, I was very, um, happy, but also anxious. Um, and one night I went with my mom, uh, for a walk at a different local university and, um, we got lost and it was dark.

We were kind of in the park of the university. And we went up to an office that we saw there was a light on. This office was the camp office. And then the person who was in charge of camp, [00:03:00] Geek a Friend, at that time, we knocked on her door and she like opened the blinds and looked at us kind of like, what, what do you want?

What are you doing? Why are you here? And then in the evening, whenever everyone's supposed to be gone, eventually she walked up, welcomed us in. And, um, she actually kind of recruited me. that day to go to that university. So I, I kind of got rid of my intent for the other university and went to, uh, went to UC Irvine and then she, she was in charge of camp and camp is one of the reasons why I think I was able to be successful as an undergraduate, even after going on academic probation and having her help me out of that.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, again, we'll maybe get like, we'll talk a little bit more about what you actually do or what your involvement is. But just briefly, what does CAMP do? I mean, it seems to be pretty official then if there's a, if there's on campus of the university, uh, an office. Um, yeah, kind of just what, what do they do and yeah.

Brandon Brown: The California Alliance for [00:04:00] Minority Participation, so CAMP, it's um, the goal is to diversify the scientific workforce by, um, increasing the number of people from underrepresented groups in, uh, with bachelor degrees and to go on and get, uh, graduate degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

So it's a UC wide program, um, University of California wide at all the nine undergraduate campuses. And yeah, it's been very successful. It's funded by the National Science Foundation and at Riverside. What we do is we have faculty mentored research experiences for the, for the students, many of whom are what we call first generation students and kind of trying to figure out, um, academia and research and like next steps, kind of like, uh, like I just mentioned.

So we have professional development activities. We have, um, grad school fee [00:05:00] waivers. Uh, we have a course that kind of helps them prepare for applying to grad school and, and the students have been really successful in, in getting into grad school and some, some of them even call it like a science bootcamp.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: What did the, going back to, That time you were lost and then found your home for the next few years. Uh, what did the, what the lady, how did she convince you to, to go there? Or, I mean, was it just, you know, having a face associated with the university and someone telling you how it works or what did she, what did you do?

Brandon Brown: Well, she's very convincing. Um, and I, I went to that office with, with my, uh, with my mom, who was also very convincing at the time. And Kika began to talk to my mom and kind of, uh, and myself and kind of tell us about camp and ask me questions. And, um, yeah. She made sure to make it known that if I were to go to [00:06:00] UC Irvine, that she would be there to, to help me and take care of me and watch over me.

And because of that, the decision was kind of a lot easier because at the other university, I had no one. I didn't really know what to expect. But to have just one person to say, I'll be here. I'm going to help you. I'm going to guide you. I'm going to connect you with these different groups. There's a. Like a summer program prior to freshman year that we're going to get you involved with.

We're going to talk with financial aid and the library. It was just, it was just perfect. Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: haven't thought about this in years, but I just remembered that like when I, so I. I grew up in mainly in Germany, or I went to school in Germany. And, but I decided I wanted to go to, or I was at least considering going to the UK, back to the UK where I was born to study. And so there was this like university fair kind of small thing, somewhat close to where I lived, where.[00:07:00]

basically a bunch of British universities that each just sent like one person, um, and then, you know, they all had their little stand and you could just go there and like ask them about university and they'd, you know, um, tell you something. And it's kind of funny because I'd, you know, again, I hadn't thought about this probably since I was there.

They were basically because I wanted to go to London. There were a few London universities and in the end for the academic profile I had, let's say, you know, as we discussed before, as someone who didn't really do school in that sense, um, there were a few available in London that, you know, uh, you could get into without good grades.

Um, and yeah, I think actually, like, when I actually applied, it was probably, uh, one of the reasons I applied to Goldsmiths where I ended up studying. Was probably because they had someone at that fair. There was, you know, City University in London would be a similar profile, but I guess they were just like a big anonymous thing to me.

Whereas the other thing, I don't know, I could talk, I talked to someone about it for a few minutes [00:08:00] and that just made it a lot more. I mean, it didn't, obviously. There was nothing I learned from that guy that, uh, really meant anything, right? It was all sort of fairly generic. Um, I mean, all the people there were like just pleasant and just like, Oh yeah, you can do that at this university.

Probably also the same thing anyway. But, uh, I don't know. There was, I guess there's something about having like some sort of specific, Something specific about a place that, I guess, like, especially when you're like, I'm assuming you were also then just like 18 or something like that, um, makes it somehow seem less daunting to go to this, like, new, completely new

Brandon Brown: a human connection, right? Like another human cares about you.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I guess in your case, actually someone you will see again, which, which made it a lot more, uh, concrete.

Brandon Brown: Yes.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I mean, so you use, you said you thought you were not going to get in, but there wasn't necessarily because you had bad grades or anything like that. I mean, I guess you must've had, well, I mean, I don't know how it works actually in the U [00:09:00] S with the applications.

Is it based on grades or, or can you say, Hey, I'm great at tech one door. So, you know,

Brandon Brown: I think, yeah, it helps to have the extracurricular activities, but the grades are also very important and you have to have all of the, um, kind of a collection of courses that you've taken in order to get into the university so that you meet all the requirements. Back then we also had like the, uh, the SAT.

the SAT test. Now I think a lot of universities are getting rid of that. But yeah, I, I didn't have too bad of grades from high school to go to the university. But um, these days you need to get like a 4. 2 out of 4. 0 to be kind of competitive, which is,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: more than a

Brandon Brown: it's getting just more, yeah, it's getting more, more competitive.

So you have to take AP classes, honors, and all these things to kind of, you know, be competitive. Put yourself ahead of the rest to be, uh, recognized. Heh.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I [00:10:00] just realized that when you said all those terms you just said, uh, maybe as a general like short, I mean, just for people listening and because I mean, we'll be talking, I guess, a lot about the academic system and, uh, all the kind of fuzzy stuff that is often not discussed, but actually very important.

Uh, I guess we'll be talking about a lot of that grants, what's valued in academia and all these kind of things. Um, as a. Just as a, as a beautiful noun that I'm missing right now. Uh, but just, I just wanted to say that, like, I guess you're in the U S and I'm not in the U S so I guess whatever you say might not apply that much to European systems and whatever my experience are, probably not to the U S just so people are aware of that it's, it's probably not gonna be one to one, but I guess just having a bunch of ideas out there, probably going to be useful, but yeah, just so for example, like, I don't know what an AP class is or anything

Brandon Brown: Oh, yeah,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Advanced program, is that what it is?

Brandon Brown: Yeah, it's, um, Yeah, I mean, I [00:11:00] mentioned also the SAT test. That's the Scholastic Aptitude Test. Uh, AP means Advanced Placement. So you take a course and then you, um, take a test at the end to get college credit. Um, so these are all things that kind of put people ahead of the game and more competitive to get into, uh, to get into a university.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I see, yeah. Okay, yeah, so you basically decide you want to go to Irvine then. And what did you do?

Brandon Brown: I went to Irvine. I, I initially applied under, uh, computer engineering. Didn't enjoy it as much. Switched to computer science. Did some, um, programming. Didn't enjoy that as much. And eventually I switched to, uh, applied mathematics. Um, and I just did a lot better and enjoyed it much more.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I see, so I assumed, um, I mean, [00:12:00] Yeah, I guess we're not really going to be talking that much about your actual research today. Uh, but I always assumed it was more like biology or something like that that you studied. Because you ended up, I know, I read like viruses, that's the main term I remembered. I figured, uh, okay, anyway, but you studied, ended up, like what I've heard in the U.

S. is also very broad anyway, still in your undergraduate, right? It's not, I mean, especially in, in Europe, I think, I mean, depending on your degree. But many degrees are just like, if you do maths, you do maths for three years, right?

Brandon Brown: Yeah, I'm here at a lot of the universities. The first two years, a lot of times you're taking general courses that you need to graduate with your degree. And then in the kind of last two years, you really delve deep into your into your major. So you had mentioned that, um, you know, you thought maybe I was doing biology.

One of the things that I did as an undergraduate was try to focus on mathematical biology. [00:13:00] So that was kind of like, that might help a little bit to frame how I kind of got to be doing what I'm doing now with like, you know, epidemiology and viruses and working with community members.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Right. Um, I mean, what do you think you were going to do, basically? I mean, because you, I guess you didn't plan on being a scientist. Was it, you thought, okay, I'll just do this, see what college is like, and then go and do Taekwondo again? Or did you, did you lose that? Are you still doing that? But yeah, basically, I mean, those are two completely separate questions, but, um, uh, maybe, yeah, I mean, so basically what, what did you think you were going to do then whilst, throughout your undergraduate and how, how did that change?

Brandon Brown: Yeah, when I was actually in undergrad, I did do some, um, I did try to keep up with the taekwondo. There was a taekwondo kind of team at the university, and I was practicing with them for a while. Um, but what [00:14:00] I had planned to do after graduating was to, um, to be an actuary. And, um, I don't know if you know the term actuary.

A lot of people don't know exactly what it is here, but, um,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Sounds like something vaguely like taxation and law.

Brandon Brown: Yeah, I mean, they kind of analyze the, the costs of risk, any kind of financial uncertainty. A lot of people who do that work for like hedge funds and try to predict what's happening, um, in the stock market or, or otherwise. So I was thinking that initially, um, for like a goal after graduation. But then, um, when I was ready to graduate.

Maybe coming up to the last year. I kind of realized I didn't enjoy kind of doing math all day, uh, per se. And also there were a few jobs available at the time. Um, [00:15:00] so I applied to a, uh, master's in public health program, um, with some motivation from one of my friends who is doing a PhD at UCLA that I met in, uh, South Africa.

for a public health program. Um, and she convinced me to apply, and then I got in and I studied uh, epidemiology, which is really the most, um, or kind of a math version of public health where you get to apply concepts into public health and the study of disease. Yeah,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Than you maybe had 10, had to 10 years ago.

Brandon Brown: absolutely. And it's great that people know a little bit more about public health and hopefully that also translates to more funding going to public health departments and programs because I know that they're terribly overworked and underfunded. And I know that, [00:16:00] um, the pandemic is not over and there's going to be more things coming in the future that we need to prepare for.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: But you said you met this person who convinced you in South Africa on some sort of public health thing. So I guess you, you were already interested in it, right?

Brandon Brown: I was kind of already interested because I think I mentioned when I was in undergrad, one of the things that I did, I did a project on mathematical biology in terms of predicting the spread of different HIV genotypes globally. And that kind of got me interested in HIV. And then I applied to this summer program at, um, University of Cape Town and got linked to, um, A really wonderful, uh, kind of mentor, Collins Arianbua.

And then that's where I met Tiffany Penniman, who was doing her PhD at UCLA, and she said, Brandon, you should go for an [00:17:00] MPH if you're interested in this kind of stuff. So, so I did.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: And then straight into PhD or after that or

Brandon Brown: Yeah, so the, the MPH program is two years and then, um, into the second year I was thinking what am I going to do next? There weren't a lot of job prospects that I could see at the time that I would be super competitive for. So yeah, I just decided, you know, let's just keep going because I'm here already.

Let's see what's next and I applied to, um, a bunch of PhD programs and I got into two of them. And then I, uh, I elected to go to, to one of them and international health at Hopkins. It was a good program.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: But if I understand it correctly, you basically ended up continuing your studies out of not that many jobs being there because I guess you were already there.

Brandon Brown: Correct. Yeah. Yeah. It was kind of a [00:18:00] way almost to put off the decision of what am I going to be doing? for a job in the future, but also making sure that I'm continuously getting more educated and maybe hopefully more competitive for a job that could come up in the future. And I definitely, one of the things that I'll, um, that I can also mention is that I never planned or thought that I could be competitive, or could be interested, or would eventually get like a job in academia.

That just is not something that crossed my mind. Um, it's not something that I feel like I got. training to do. But really, I think what a lot of these PhD programs do, their intent is to train people to kind of like be the peers of those who are training them. Um, because those who are training them in academia, they're in academia, they know about academia and they're [00:19:00] training you with what they know about the knowledge of academia.

So what do you, what ends up happening is, you know, a lot about academia.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, and then you, now you can listen to a podcast where people talk more about it. You learn even more about it.

Brandon Brown: Exactly. I

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I don't exactly want to skip over more or less most of your career, but also I guess we do want to get to, to those topics, so, um, I don't know whether there's, um, yeah, I mean, basically, you've been writing a few, uh, kind of columns, I guess, for nature and for science.

and about kind of academic careers. I think that's what it's called, right? Academic career column or something like that. Um, so that's what we're talking about. Um, I don't know. Is there anything else we should mention before that? Or should we just talk about chickens?

Brandon Brown: mean, I think the only thing before that might be interesting to talk about before those would [00:20:00] be that, um, prior to, to getting the faculty position, I did do some Kind of study abroad stuff in Singapore and spent a lot of time in Peru. And I feel that if, um, if people have the opportunity to kind of go to a different place and, um, kind of immerse themselves in a different culture, climate, and kind of geographical setting, I think that is super useful for, um, for learning about the world.

That's

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: you're a career economist. Uh, yeah, as I said, basically the combination will be you don't have career grants, but a farm. And, uh, maybe to, to, to link to something is that early when you thought you, you maybe weren't going to be a competitive in academia. I hope that I got it correctly there. Um, is that, I mean, so one thing we'll be talking a little bit about in, with your essay about, um, big grants.

I mean, it's not that you haven't had any grants, but you haven't had the like big grants. [00:21:00] Um, you talk about basically other kinds of recognition in academia and other kinds of contributions rather than just bringing in lots of money from a, from a funding organization. Um, I'm curious, is that, is it a coincidence that you've done all these other things?

Um, Basically, it seems to me it's almost like you just took a different route basically, right, to getting to have this kind of tenured faculty position. Um, was that also a big, I mean, where did you basically think I'm not going to be able to compete with that, so I'll just do whatever else I think is interesting and useful, or was that just a coincidence?

Brandon Brown: Yeah, I think, I think there maybe wasn't a conscious decision to go against the grain so much, um, in terms of like the, the standard journey in academia, which is, um, for a lot of the universities here, like what people call an R1 or research intensive university. The [00:22:00]expectations that you do get these big grants, like, um, through the National Institutes of Health, like an R01 type grant, or a few R21 grants, which are for maybe like one to two years.

The R01 is maybe like five years of funding to do a large project.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I feel like with like multiple PhD students or postdocs or something like that, or those kind of like several million dollars probably, that kind of thing, yeah.

Brandon Brown: Several million dollars where you have, you know, co investigators or maybe co PIs, you have, um, community partners, a community advisory board, you have students, uh, you have post docs, um, big teams to help you achieve these, the goals, um. So while I didn't apply for those grants, it doesn't mean, I don't think that I didn't apply because, uh, I was trying to say, I'll show you, I'm going to do it my own way.

I feel like I just kind of went on a different path. [00:23:00] And I, I was able to be, Successful by getting smaller grants by taking advantage of maybe publicly available data sets by being on different study teams where people did have large grants where I could kind of bring some value to the table with my experience in research ethics and publishing and maybe um, kind of administering stuff.

But, uh, yeah, I think. the intent was not to go against the grain, but maybe most recently it's become that a bit more where people are telling me, Hey, Brandon, you need to go for like NIH. You need to get an R01. You need to do this, this, and that. And I'm thinking to myself, I don't really want to do that.

I'm kind of enjoying the things that I'm doing right now. And I think that if I, if I do that and talking with some of my colleagues that are doing that, it doesn't seem to bring a whole lot of joy. [00:24:00] And right now I'm, like, really interested in bringing myself and those around me a lot of joy. Heh.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: why I, um, so I initially read that column. I think that's also your most recent one. Um, or at least I, I, someone probably tweeted about it. Um, and I was procrastinating. So I saw it and, um, and, but basically the one, the reason I found that interesting is because I guess I'm, so I just started my postdoc two months ago and I'm in this kind of position where.

Yeah. I still don't really know whether I want to do the whole being a professor having my own lab and well I mean these are all separate things also and that's maybe also what we'll talk about a little bit but I guess it's it seems to me that the kind of model of what you should do as a professor these days in at least the kind of stuff I'm interested in like Computational neuroscience in humans, roughly, is to get [00:25:00] these big grants.

And then, I mean, that's how you get a professorship often in the first place, right? You, you get like in Europe, like an ERC grant for like 2 million or however much it is. And then they give you a professorship and recognition for that. And then, you know, from the, and it seems, it just seems to me that that's kind of what you're supposed to do.

And that lots of people then kind of, you know, I don't know, it seems to me there's a large proportion of professors who are kind of like, um, I don't know exactly what the English word would be, but uh, but there's, there's a beautiful slightly negative term in German. Um, but basically that they spend most of their time trying to get money.

And, I don't know, that just seems, in some sense I could see myself doing it because I think I could be good at that. But it also seems vaguely depressing. And Yeah, so I guess we will talk a little bit more. That's why I invited you also, right, to kind of talk about these, kind of how you can have a career [00:26:00] without doing that or, yeah, all this kind of stuff surrounding it.

Brandon Brown: Well, but also I think some people do get a lot of joy out of that. You get, like, the um, You know, endorphins in, in writing the grants and then in getting the grants. And then oftentimes what you have to do once you get a grant is you, uh, you write another grant to get the next grant while you're doing your grant.

And just so that you like

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: of getting money. Yeah.

Brandon Brown: Yeah, but it's also about maybe, um, taking care of all the people that are currently funded on your grant. So, um, you also don't want to let them down. So you have like extra external pressure to make sure that you are continuously competitive. That way you can continuously be, make sure to pay people their, their salaries, whether they're students, staff, um,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I mean, I certainly, I mean, I think the, the, the appeal of it is very obvious in that sense, right? I mean, if you are the kind of person [00:27:00] who can have a grant where there is usually money, then. You know, stuff happens in your lab and you can do cool stuff that you couldn't do on your own. Um, and, and the people who work for you probably a bit more relaxed because they know like if, if something happens, you have, you have money to pay them a bit longer if necessary.

And, you know, there's obviously like lots and lots of good reasons for doing that. And I also recognize that. I mean, for example, I, you know, I also don't like programming and that's how I spend a fair amount of my time. And I recognize that maybe writing a grant for me would actually probably be more fun than debugging my code.

I do recognize that. It's just, I don't know. For me, that's just like, I've, I've written two fellowship applications right now. So just for me to get money. And I did this just something. Something about it just makes me Just a little bit sad when I do it. There's just something so crushing about it About this like asking for money.

I don't know

Brandon Brown: I mean, but that's, at least in academia, I feel [00:28:00] like we have to do that all the time, right? So depending on, on your career and where you're working, and you'd mentioned that, you know, if where you're at, actually, if you get a big grant and you're doing great research, this is when you can be like offered a professorship. Here, it's

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: it to me I mean to me it seems like often like how people get these positions are by saying like hey Oh, let's put it this way if you have one of those things and I think it's a lot

Brandon Brown: Yeah, it makes you more competitive, right? Um,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I mean, you're basically saying, hey, can I be a professor? I can employ five people, whatever, right?

I mean, from my money, yeah.

Brandon Brown: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think here, um, In the U. S. it seems to be, and maybe it's global, it seems to be getting more competitive, like the job market for academia seems to be getting more competitive, so in the past, to get a position as assistant professor, you might be going [00:29:00]against, um, you know, a dozen or dozens of applicants, but now it could be like, hundreds of applicants that you're competing against.

And whereas before, maybe you didn't need a lot of publications or that wasn't really expected because you're going to get those on the way because they're being written up now. It's like, where are your publications? Where, where is your, uh, you know, grant funding, where, uh, what are you doing right now?

What's, what's like under review. So it's, it seems like it's a lot more, um, than it, than it at least was for me when I was applying.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I think that's the case everywhere. I mean, I remember when I was applying for PhD positions, some of the, um, people who had done PhDs in very good places, they said, like, I don't think I would get in these days. Like, with the stuff I had, I would not get in these days anymore.

Brandon Brown: Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: like, well, that's nice to hear.

Brandon Brown: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's kind of sad, right? And, um, because by the time you do your, your [00:30:00] Ph. D. You've already done a lot of school. By the time you get into a postdoc, you've already, you know, put yourself above the rest to get that position. And then what's next? Um, like, if you want to go into academia, um, there's different tracks that you can go into.

But here, the, the one that most people want is the, um, like a state funded position, where your salary is guaranteed. And that's, that's what a lot of people are interested in, because

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Sorry, as opposed to what, you're having your own money through a, through some sort of agency that you got, or

Brandon Brown: Yeah, as opposed to like a contract for a year or two years or three years or as opposed to having a position where the expectation is maybe you need to be teaching eight classes or ten classes a year and that doesn't leave you a lot of time to do the research that you really wanted to do, which for some people is why they got into academia in the first place, [00:31:00] but for others they love to do the teaching so there's like different tracks.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I mean maybe, I guess because we can, you know, take this in so many different ways and, uh Yeah, so maybe, I think maybe we can, uh, focus this by taking my preferences because that's all I care about, um, which is research. I mean, I wouldn't mind teaching, I think there are like two or three courses I wouldn't mind teaching because it's like specific topics I'd be interested in.

Um, I mean roughly like, you know, two topical things and one methods kind of thing. Uh, so I could, I could see myself doing that, but probably also not more than like five times. I think then I get bored. I don't know. I've never done it. But, um, so yeah, let's maybe assume that, uh, or gear our conversation a little bit more towards people who want to do science and not in it for that.

And because, I mean, it seems to me, especially in the UK, I think it's, There are, you know, in the UK there's a slight different system where you are, you start off as a lecturer, where you give lots of [00:32:00] lectures, then senior lecturer, reader and professor, you kind of can, uh, work your way over that way. Um, but it starts, yeah, with, with, I mean, I think it starts with teaching everywhere, right?

Where the more junior you are, the less, you know. Choices you have and

Brandon Brown: Correct. Correct.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: okay. One question I had about grants is because you said, you know, you don't have the big ones, but you have, you've had a few smaller ones. My initial reaction to that was, isn't that just inefficient? Um, I mean, so this obviously depends on the success rates of different grants and blah, blah, blah.

But it seems to me also that like having one big grant would, you know, be worth, I don't know, five small grants or whatever, depending on the grant size. Um, but I was just curious about that. Is it, um, basically why not apply You know, put all your effort into getting a big grant or a few big grants Um in terms of like efficiency or effectiveness.

Um, Yeah, why do you do that way?

Brandon Brown: That's a great point. And I think one of the [00:33:00] things that, that kind of goes into the NIH lifestyle here for the, for the big grants, let's think about like an R01 that's like a five year multi, um, million dollar grant is that if you apply, um, depending on the agency within the National Institute of Health that you apply to, your success rate might be like, um, Anywhere from 8 percent to like, uh, 25 or 30 percent depending on the agency and depending on the year.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: It's a big range. Yeah

Brandon Brown: Yeah, I think the range is more like on the lower end, at least for the, for the R01, but some of the grants that I applied to, um, I think the success rate is much, much higher. which, which I kind of enjoy. So the, the, for, for the NIH, it takes, I think, a lot of people, many years and many cycles of [00:34:00] applications and revisions, kind of getting the foot in the door.

But once they're in, it seems like they're able to kind of get more grants because once you get a grant, you're likely to get more grants from that agency. But, um, it's just a game that I've never. I've had like a passion for playing to, to use all of that time for something that may not ever be funded, um, and for which maybe the scientific reviewers might not like my idea and it could depend on their mood for the day.

It could depend on their, their scientific background or it could depend on, on really anything. And I really don't like that.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, but I guess once you get once you get one of those then you don't have to do the small grants for a few years, right? So like it's I mean, I guess the stakes are higher, but the odds are lower um

Brandon Brown: Yeah, it's true. Yeah. And, um, the, the other grants that I've received have [00:35:00]been more like two year grants. Um,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: What do you do with a two year grant? Is that for Because I guess that's not enough for PhD students or anything like that, or I don't know, actually, maybe this is, again, now we get to the differences in systems. Um, PhD students in the US, are they always through the university program? Or, because like in I mean, yeah, this is now very Yeah, I guess we, yeah, have to be careful not to get, like, bogged down in the details.

But I guess the reason I'm asking is that in Germany, often the PhD students are employed Through the supervisor, but two years by itself wouldn't be enough for PhD. So that's kind of why I'm asking.

Brandon Brown: Yeah, I think here it depends. So, um, when I was doing my PhD, the, the first two years were funded by the university. Um, and then the. That was when I took all my classes, I was a TA, I was doing these different things, I applied for a for a pre doctoral fellowship. And then upon entering the university, the university [00:36:00] itself offered me a fellowship to, um, kind of do those first two years.

And then for my, uh, dissertation, I actually, uh, wrote a proposal for that and got it funded. So, um, it didn't have to be that my, um, PhD advisor actually had money for me to go there. It was just something that, um, that was already there for me. So in that way, it might be a little bit different from what, from what you're describing, but it's also, I think, field specific.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Right. But like with a two year grant, let's say, what would you be able to do with that? Is it for postdoc or what would that fund basically?

Brandon Brown: Yeah, I've had grad students on the, on those two year grants, because, um, if we want to think about the ideal normative time to a PhD, uh, at least in public health, it might be four years. You know, get in and get out and go on to the next thing. Same thing [00:37:00] for a, for a postdoc. When I did my postdoc, my goal was to, to get in and then get out and then start my career.

Because even with a postdoc, some people think of postdocs as trainees. And I wanted to kind of be more, um, independent. I wanted to be in charge of what I was doing. So I was like, all right, I got this postdoc. Yeah. I'm going to take advantage of it, I'm going to publish, and right now I'm going to try to get some grants, and I'm also going to start applying to faculty positions immediately.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Yeah. That's something that, um, Yeah. I want to talk, uh, ask about that. In a second, um, about that kind of thing, because I think I have a slightly unusual plan for my postdoc phase and I want to get some sort of complete, I mean, yeah, I guess, see what you think, uh, before that, I just, um, going back to the small grants versus big grants, um, I think I just, it's, it's interesting.

So I, I did, [00:38:00] uh, you know, my background is in psychology and neuroscience. And, but now I'm at a economics department officially where we do neuroeconomics and I just, I think I just had my first economics thought, which was, I was wondering whether the market is efficient in terms of, um, these grants, because it seems to me like you, it's, you're kind of saying almost as if the big grants are getting too much attention and the small grants offer a better, um, I mean, do you think they offer a, a better a higher, you know, expected reward, or do you just think for you personally, you'd rather just apply for something where you have a reasonable chance of getting it?

Kind of, do you see what I mean? Like the

Brandon Brown: Yeah, I think it's both, because I think anytime that someone here is applying for a grant from the National Institute of Health, the success rate is going to be low in general, and they publish the success rates online. But if I'm applying for a small grant through another [00:39:00]foundation like the PCORI, Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, or through an investigator initiated program with a pharmaceutical company, um, I could, those success rates, in my view, while they're not published, are much higher.

And they could also lead to other grants through, through NIH, which some of them are, are leading to. Right now, which is really cool.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: But also like adjusted for the amount that you get. Right. Because like, you know, if the others are worth five or 10 times as much or whatever, then you know. Obviously the chances are lower, but, but you still think it's worth, uh, it's, it's still a better, a better gamble basically.

Brandon Brown: I still

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: to sound like an economist now.

This is getting

Brandon Brown: Yeah. I still do. And the reason is because like, let's say today, if I applied for a, for an NIH R01 grant, I may get scored on it, which means it's kind of in the, um, upper or [00:40:00] it's. Within the top 50 percent of applications where I may not get scored. But no matter what happens, I'm going to get some reviews where people tell me what was good and bad about the application.

And if it doesn't get scored, it means it's not going to get funded for sure. So I need to try again. I need to kind of go back to the drawing board, meet with my investigative team and my, with my community and kind of talk about where to go from here. And sometimes it's a deal breaker and that idea is kind of like done.

And other times there's, there's room for improvement to kind of, uh, modify the study idea to make sure that it does get funding. But that also means like a, a little bit of give and take because you want it to be funded and you want to do what you want it to do, but you also might need to make some modifications to make sure that people who are reviewing it deem it fundable.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Uh, there's always a bit of playing the game there, right? [00:41:00] Where you need to do what you think that other people expect.

Brandon Brown: Yeah, and I feel like for the other grants that I'm applying for, I feel like I have more, um, independence in what I want to do, uh, to be able to say, well, okay, um, you didn't like this idea. I'm going to go shop it over here. Or you didn't like this idea. I have another idea that I'm really interested in.

So let me pitch that next. And it's okay. And it's not going to be, uh, it's not going to take a year to get reviewed. It's going to take a couple months.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Yeah. Um, once again, as I mentioned earlier, postdoc, uh, a few questions there. Um, so like basically. So I have a slightly unusual think plan where I think I, so because I want to do science and right now I don't, um, I feel like also I, I spent basically my PhD figuring out what I want to do. So I don't actually have a huge amount of experience in the particular question that I want to do and in the methods involved.

[00:42:00] Um, so because of that, I feel like basically I'm, um, there's basically like two different, um, Approaches to like the thing I want to study that I'm interested in. And I basically want to do like one postdoc for a few years in one approach. And then after that, the second postdoc with the other approach.

And I think it kind of fairly reasonable in that sense. Um, I was just curious, um, what some of the maybe unexpected implications of that could be. I mean, you know, I would, you know, I mean, right now I'm in a lab where I I mean, obviously supervised, but, um, it's not like I'm told what to do. We, you know, working on a project and I can pretty much do exactly what I wanted to do, which was also, you know, why I'm in this lab.

Um, I don't have the problem that you mentioned the potential one of being like just another, someone who works there and has to, you know, fill a role in that sense. Um, but I am wondering if, for example, we're like one, um, Unexpected consequence is [00:43:00] that, or whether this is true, is that I think a lot of these grants, they often have, you know, you have these like years until you can apply for stuff, like you can apply until like three to seven years after your PhD, you are officially in this category of researcher.

Um, and I'm obviously blowing through that if I basically want to spend like eight years doing a postdoc. Um, Is I'm just curious, like with that kind of stuff in mind, what, what you think, because I'd basically like to spend like two times, four years doing a postdoc where I just get like really, really good at these, what I want to do.

And then, you know, then I can do admin.

Brandon Brown: Yeah. So, I mean, it, it sounds like during your postdoc, what you're doing is you're, you're like improving your methods. Is that what kind of what you're doing?

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Uh, I mean, I'm first I'm learn. Yeah. I'm just getting really good at the stuff that, at these two approaches basically. [00:44:00] I mean, obviously I hope I'm gonna improve the approach of the field as a whole, but I, yeah, I'm trying to get very good at these things and just know exactly what I'm doing. Basically , that's the idea.

Brandon Brown: No, that makes sense. Um, I mean, the only, the only caveat that I would have, because, um, At least here. I know a few people that have been, um, doing a postdoc for, for a while. And I think one of them who's been doing it for maybe around eight years, as you mentioned. There could be times when people from the outside can kind of, after a long period of time could kind of view you as, Oh, you are a postdoc and you are not like a, uh, you're not a peer.

Right? You're not a peer, because you're, you're staying there, and you're doing what you want to do, and you're continuously being funded, and, um, They might not see it the same way as, as you're describing, which is kind of gaining expertise and, um, [00:45:00] you know, continuously improving your methods to, to build up your expertise.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I mean, I view it basically as a way to just do act, actually do science rather than all this other stuff around it, like teaching a course or doing some like university admin or blah blah, blah. Right. It's basically just like my attempt to actually do science . That's basically all what I'm trying to do.

Brandon Brown: Yeah. Yeah, and I understand, um, And part of the, part of the tradeoff in getting the faculty position is that you will be expected to do those other things that you just mentioned, which is, you know, teach a course or, um, you know, mentor this number of students, which is the norm in the department or doing this kind of service.

in the department and then, you know, coming up with your file each year, every few years to move up in terms of merit and promotion. And sometimes, uh, a lot of that stuff could take [00:46:00] your time and energy away from the science that you want to do, um, to kind of, Distract you from from what exactly is is the thing that you got into in the first place But it's also kind of part for the course and it becomes the norm and there's ways to To make sure that you you have a balance and everything and that that it works But when I did mine when I did my postdoc, I got the postdoc position right after my my PhD And then I, I did it for about, um, nine months and, um, I got a joint postdoc somewhere else.

And so I was, you know, working really hard. I was trying to publish a lot of my papers for my PhD. I was applying for a few of these small grants and gaining some skills on, um, laboratory protocols and things like that. And I was like, well, this is great. But, um, [00:47:00] I don't necessarily like to be in this kind of trainee phase.

I'm just ready. I just want to get started in this academic life and be, um, be in this professor track because I feel like here I'm kind of stuck and I want to get to that next step. Not, not just because of the, the salary is different, which here, here it was, um, kind of. different, but also because I felt that it was just the next step and I wanted to get there as soon as possible, um, and I could do other things kind of along the way.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: But I mean, is that mainly, I guess what I'm, what I'm trying to figure out is that whether, I mean, in a sense to me, I guess, like, I feel like that is what I can do as a postdoc, like do my own thing and work on my questions and, you know, basically, um, other than being able [00:48:00] to, You know, get money in so other people can do part of the work that I now have to do.

Um, I, I don't see that much of a salary. I don't see that much of a benefit and, uh, you know, for actually being a, uh, uh, yeah. On some sort of tenure track, whatever the system might be where I would do it. Um, I mean, it seems to me basically like from what you said that that a lot of that was just about how you felt about the role, rather than, yeah, because I guess, yeah, I guess, I mean, yeah, I'm being a bit vague here, but I guess it seems to me that I was a little bit surprised because I don't, I feel that way about a postdoc, almost the way you thought about a professorship, it seems to be almost of like being able to do my thing.

Um,

Brandon Brown: Yeah, and it might be, it might be like different, um, differences between the institutions where we are, like [00:49:00] between the US institutions and the institution, um, in Switzerland or, or in Germany, for example, um,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: It seems to

Brandon Brown: that might be a

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: yeah, there's such a big difference. I mean, even in fields, like what I found weird is that in, um, And so I'm now at a neuroeconomics Institute. So officially it's an economic, well, it's an economics department, but we basically all do cognitive neuroscience. Um, a bit about kind of questions that economists are also sometimes interested in and what I find kind of wild is that economists, it seems to me like, from what I can tell, they often become assistant professor, like right after their PhD, which is, I'm sure it exists, but very rarely neuroscience.

I mean, everyone, it feels like everyone I know in neuroscience did at least two, three years of postdoc. Uh, whereas in econ, it seems like people, they don't even have a publication. They just have like two working papers. And then there's [00:50:00] this professor at like prestigious universities. I don't know. It's, it's weird to like put together, uh, because even like within one place, the two fields seem to be so different.

Um, yes, I guess it's really specific.

Brandon Brown: Yeah, maybe. It sounds like there's, there's more kind of training and more postdoctoral work expected in, in one of those

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: In neuroscience, definitely. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think it's just a whole, yeah, it seems to me to be a whole different system. I mean, even, even just publications are completely different from what I can tell in economics compared to psychology and neuroscience. Because I think their, you know, review process can take years because they like really, it seems like they're, from what I can tell, like they're really trying to like polish them and make the papers great.

Um, rather than, I think in psychology often it can be a bit more of a, eh, let's forget it out.

Brandon Brown: Yeah. And thinking about perfection [00:51:00] versus, you know, does this need to get out right now or not? Or can it wait?

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, but I guess I'm just realizing like how idiosyncratic a lot of the, a lot of these questions are. I mean, you know, obviously I can, you know, ask the people in the lab. I mean, you know, my supervisor in the institute and all that kind of stuff. Um, but I'm just realizing in, in trying to now have this conversation that's slightly broader, it's actually not that easy because it seems to be so different between fields.

Um, and you're from a slightly different field than, uh, I mean, not like miles away, but. You know, I guess far away enough, um, that a lot of these things, um, yeah, can be just very specific to a particular place and research area.

Brandon Brown: Yeah, and there's other questions that I think are super important that maybe, maybe nobody asks, um, in any kind of place or research area, or maybe you can tell me if, if it's similar to where you [00:52:00] are. So, um, having, you know, deep conversations about salaries and role and negotiating, um, your position and, um, you know, what academia is really like and what to expect.

And you know, what are the pros and cons and what are the alternatives? Um, you know, the, the idea of intellectual freedom versus money is how some people see academia versus, you know, non academia, but also how to, how to stand up for yourself and how to tackle, you know, like imposter phenomenon and, um, how to be firm in doing what you want to do and, um, making sure that.

the things that you absolutely don't want to do because they're going to be distraction and have nothing to do with your goals are not things that you're going to be pursuing but also kind of being careful because it's like a dance and you want to be viewed as a team player um and how reviews work[00:53:00] for faculty for merit and promotion getting the next step and some of these things are very different i think as as you mentioned by institution and field

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I mean, for me as, you know, someone who's German and English, the systems are, they're getting a bit more similar now, but in England it was, I think, I think it's basically if you want to. Just comparing those two countries, it seems to me like England or Germany is way better for doing a PhD Because you're often on a salary You earn more Relative at least to the living conditions and all that kind of stuff and I think that's that can often be better But for example to if you want to do a kind of tenure track kind of thing I mean, it's That's changing, but that almost doesn't exist in Germany.

It's almost this weird thing where it's like you're professor or not. Like it's, it's not, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but, um, and now they've added these like junior professorships, which is like a tenure track thing, I think, more or less. But yeah, in England, I think the [00:54:00] entry is very gentle from, you know, being a lecturer and then you can get promoted a few times and then you're professor.

Whereas in Germany, it's, I think it was a lot, uh, it's a lot steeper in this like. After your PhD, basically, or after, yeah, this is where you can be a postdoc, but then being a professor is actually a much bigger step. Um, and you know, those are just two pretty similar Western European countries. I mean,

Brandon Brown: Yeah, no, that's interesting. And I think here, here, there is like a, like, there are people that could stumble at the universities here from like the postdoc to the next position. And to make it, to make sure that, um, you know, that you carry value with you to this next position and value in terms of like, that the people that are viewing your application, see you as valuable and they want to hire you.

And sometimes that doesn't always happen, right? And there's different reasons why that happens and why, why that doesn't [00:55:00] happen. But often here, it's like, um, you do the PhD, you do a postdoc, and then you have assistant professor, associate professor and full professor, but getting into the assistant, that's like a kind of a pretty, pretty difficult thing that you have to win over a lot of people to get.

Um, but, but also getting to associate and full, those are, those are also kind of, um, Big hurdles and they, they have different hurdles for different people for, for different reasons.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I mean, so let's maybe talk a little bit about the kind of different contributions that you can, or not you, but one can have in, uh, the academic system. I mean, I think the The two obvious ones, I would imagine, are publications and grants. How much money you get in and where you publish, right? I think those are the, like, two obvious ones.

Um, so I guess we probably don't need to talk about those that much because I think it's fairly obvious that those are, yeah, I mean, maybe, as we said, you maybe don't have to [00:56:00] have both of them to the full extent. Um, for some places you do probably, but, you know. Um, Um, yeah, but maybe the kind of what, what else is there, what are some things that basically you, maybe you think from, from your career that where you've, um, had contributions that are maybe not necessarily the things that are super obvious that, that those can be useful.

I mean, not that they can't be used for an economic system, but like economic, it is educational system. Um, but, um, that they would actually help for promoting a career.

Brandon Brown: So, I mean, apart from, from grants and publications, um, the other two things in general that we are, um, evaluated and measured here by are, um, teaching and service. And teaching means, like, the courses that you're teaching and it means, like, uh, Mentoring, whether it be, um, undergrads, grads, junior faculty, um, [00:57:00] postdocs, anything, um, across the gamut.

And then service could be like committee service, local, national, international, um, So for me, I think the, the thing that's helped with my teaching, um, and service has been my, um, probably has been my work with camp and it, it kind of, it worked out really well because I actually care about it and I'm, I'm committed to it and it's, I think something that's difficult to find where, um, people could, could judge me on this thing that, that I actually believe in.

And so maybe that's kind of, uh, kind of rare, but also for, for myself, it's probably also important to acknowledge that as I've been able to like rise up through the, through the ranks, I probably had a little easier time than other people because I haven't really been. I haven't [00:58:00] been bullied or harassed or intimidated.

And I know this happens also in academia. Uh, yes, yet,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: There's always time.

Brandon Brown: I'm a bit older, right? I have this gray hair and people, people might feel bad because of this gray hair to, to do that kind of thing to an old man. But I also

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: don't think you're that, you don't seem that odd that you're going to get the sympathy, sympathy, non bullying yet. I think it's going to take a while.

Brandon Brown: but I'm also, you know, I, I exercise every morning. I might be. I might be intimidating to bully or harass or intimidate, right? So I don't face that barrier and maybe I don't face the different barriers of like, uh, racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism that other people might face as they try to take the same kind of, um, path.

So, I mean, um, there's a lot of things that could prevent people from Who have really great work that they're doing in research, teaching, and service that are not able [00:59:00] to kind of make it because of People holding them back

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Right, yeah. But I mean, that's the case always, right? Even if you have great publications. I guess like, I guess with some stuff like funding, Yeah. And publications, I guess at some point there's like an objectivity to that that's hard to deny but um, you know, if you say like I'm bringing five million dollars with me, you know, it's like well I am very sexist, but I will let you in with the five million dollars Yeah, so I mean that's you know I mean these I guess what I mean is just like those it seems to me like those things would apply even if we think about the traditional Measures that we might have in academia, right like publications and And

Brandon Brown: Yeah, yeah, and these days even with publications the the movement is to for different journals to charge for publication rate. It's kind of being more and more towards that trend, which makes me [01:00:00] think, um, about the quality of the papers that are accepted, including my own, because we, we pay for that. We pay for it to be reviewed and uh, so it's different because in the past I don't remember a lot of different journals that would charge for um, kind of open access kind of thing but now the the movement is towards open access and you know it used to be like PLOS One and BMJ but now it's a lot of journals in my field that in the past did

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Practically all of them, right? So if you want to have like complete open access, I mean, I don't know. I, I haven't looked into what the processing fees for nature are, but I'm assuming they have some for open access.

Brandon Brown: Yeah. And for some journals, there's no choice. Like, um, we are open, open access journal. If you publish with us, you will pay 3, 500, 3, 500 us

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: yeah, that's this whole weird [01:01:00] thing where the, something that is in principle very good, uh, has led to this secondary problem, I guess.

Brandon Brown: Yeah. And predatory journals because, um, you know, if, if different kinds of emerging journals that, that are predatory, if they see that other very, um, high impact, classical. journals, um, are charging, then they say, okay, we will charge two, and we will make our name kind of similar to the name of this journal, and we will, we will continue to, uh, to make money.

And your, your paper will be published, you'll be happy, and we'll be happy. But then we have to think, okay, um, is this journal that I published in, is, is it, you know, recognized as something that is Does it have an impact factor? Is it on, you know, PubMed? What's going on?

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: You mean, uh, like everyone's favorite journal, Nature Science Cell? [01:02:00] Such a good, I mean, sometimes I feel like with these pressure things, there's actually a genius to it. Um, you know, actually calling your journal Nature Science Cell, so people can say they published in Nature Science Cell. It's

Brandon Brown: Yes.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: It's so good. Um, it's almost worth doing it just for the, just for the, just for the joke.

Brandon Brown: Uh

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, but yeah, I mean, maybe to. Uh, to, to maybe talk a little bit about, to use a few examples, I mean, you mentioned the, I can't remember what you called it, teaching and service and whatever you called it. Um, one thing I was surprised by is, for example, when I applied for the fellowship, I could actually mention the podcast.

Um, because it's a kind of like public communication, public, uh, like, yeah, office science. Um, so I'm curious, like, um, you know, there's not something I've, I've, I thought this would not help in my career, but. Maybe it does do a little bit. Um, I don't know. Um, but yeah, kind of what else can fall into that? I mean, is it [01:03:00] just like supervising students and teaching courses?

Is that pretty much it mainly? And then occasionally some like, you know, giving a little bit of lecture or doing some interviews or that kind of thing for like public outreach? Or what, what kind of falls into that? Yeah, there's like one bucket you mentioned earlier with,

Brandon Brown: Yeah. Yeah. And I think doing the service that we kind of love and enjoy is important. Probably. For you, it seems like your, your podcast is something that brings you joy. And you just mentioned that something that you're able to kind of include, which I think is a, is a huge win win, right? Because you care about it and other people value it.

So. This is a, this is a huge win win for, for me, like working, um, as, as faculty director for the camp program, which is a program that, you know, I took, uh, I was able to take advantage of when I was an undergraduate and get, um, kind of assistance and professional [01:04:00] development and resources from now I could kind of give back to the students that are kind of where I was back in, uh, 1999, which was a while ago, but it's really rewarding.

to be able to do that. Um, there's also, you know, I think you had mentioned before, uh, like non profit stuff. So, um, I'm also, I work with a community based non profit that, uh, kind of addresses racial justice and health disparities. It's called True Evolution.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Can you say a little bit more about that? Because I couldn't, I looked at the website. I couldn't quite figure out what it does. I don't know. It's, it's, it's yeah. What is that? What are that? Um, what do they do? And what do you do as part of that?

Brandon Brown: Yeah, it's it's based in Riverside, uh, here in California. Um, initially what they were doing was offering kind of HIV testing and counseling for, uh, LGBTQ plus people, [01:05:00] but they also now offer behavioral health services, um, emergency housing support, um, internships, fellowships.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: It's like an organization. People can contact if they have any of these issues or,

Brandon Brown: Yeah, yeah. Or if they just want to go there and talk and be part of the community, um, within the Riverside community, you know, they're welcome to go there. I've been on that board of directors, I think, for, for almost 10 years now. Um, I got interested in working kind of locally with, um, um, after, um, Um, working with an NGO in Peru focused on HIV prevention and LGBT health, but our board here at True Evolution is composed of like a lot of local and national, um, leaders excelling in their own fields, but they kind of lend their expertise to True Evolution to advance the, the mission and.

Help bring new groundbreaking, uh, kind of [01:06:00] ideas to life. And now we have project legacy, which is a campus with wraparound services for, for clients, uh, including transitional housing. And they've been active for about a year now and more projects coming down the pike from our, from our CEO, Gabe.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: But that's yeah. But so your work is also quite like. Organizational in that sense. Uh,

Brandon Brown: Yeah. And sometimes, sometimes it's hard to convince the folks in academia of Like what I'm doing and, and sometimes they also ask, how much time are you spending, um, outside of your role at the institution? Um,

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Then you have to say a lot, but not that as much, that much that it takes away from my main work or what's the,

Brandon Brown: yeah, we actually, yeah, we have like a, we have like an upper limit of the amount of hours that we're supposed to contribute, you know, outside of the university to different things. And we have to [01:07:00] report this.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: much is that for you for, is it like the same for everyone or,

Brandon Brown: It's the same for everyone and it's a lot of hours and it really depends on what you're doing for the different organizations So since I sit on a board they kind of pay close attention to that because they don't want me to get fully distracted and give all my Time energy hours to true evolution where where I'm kind of neglecting UC Riverside

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: or your students? Yeah.

Brandon Brown: Yeah, yeah.

So, but you know, since I kind of see myself doing a few things, I'll do research on, on research ethics. I'm building some research ethics training for community members. I'm going to be teaching on research ethics and for the camp program. And then I do camp faculty director and then true evolution. And those are like my, my big buckets.

Um, but I'm also working on, you know, talking about, Helping people navigate academia.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: much time can you give to the, like, what is the number? Also, I mean, you [01:08:00] don't have to answer if you don't want to, but uh,

Brandon Brown: Oh, the number of

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, I was just curious, like, what's the, how much, how much the university allows you to spend on other stuff? I mean, are we talking like 10 hours a week or like, what are we talking about here?

Brandon Brown: And then you have to kind of get permission for, for working a number of hours, and also for if you make any money doing certain work outside of the university, you have to get like pre permission to do that stuff, and then you have to report it quarterly, and then someone like reviews it and makes sure that, as you said, you're not totally neglecting your, your career, uh, for the position that pays you.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Say all that, all that money you earn for working for camp. I imagine it's in the millions.

Brandon Brown: there, there's ways to, there is way, there are ways to make money in academia, but it's not like, you know, the reason that a lot of us get into it, right? We get into it because, uh, [01:09:00]we want to do the science that we care about and we want to help change the world. Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: money, you can do it better than with trivolution and camp. They are probably more profitable. Probably, well, you could, you could start a scientific journal. That would be more profitable. Anyway, um, a little bit of social commentary there. Um, I want to ask, you mentioned it already earlier a little bit, and you had a, a column.

That's what I'm looking for. You had a column about this, uh, negotiation and Yeah, maybe you just want to say briefly kind of what, what that column was about, um, kind of what, what, what kind of things, or maybe what kind of things can we negotiate for?

Brandon Brown: Yeah. I mean, the re, the real reason why I wrote that column is because I feel that I got burned in my, um, in my first faculty position out of the postdoc where I didn't really ask questions. I didn't really, [01:10:00] um, ask for anything. I kind of trusted the person on the other end that gave me a, like a handshake deal.

Hey, come here and I'm going to take care of you. And then it just ended up not happening. So it was a learning experience. And the reason why I wrote that article is, um, to kind of help other people, um, Understand that there's no such thing as a handshake deal. Uh, in academia, maybe in other careers there are, but it's important to get everything in writing as part of your negotiations.

And um, the time when you have the most negotiating power, or maybe the only negotiating power, is before you get the job. Once you have the job, your, your power kind of decreases significantly, unless you get like a huge grant and every university in the world is really wanting you, then, then that's helpful.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: But do you really have negotiating power before? Because it seems to me, I mean, I would imagine that in a job market where you have [01:11:00] 100 applicants for one place, You can, you can, you know, make a small request here or there, but at some point they go like, you know, we have other people we could, we could give this job to.

So I was a little bit surprised when you said that, um, do you really have much power beforehand?

Brandon Brown: You do. And the reason is because by the time that you get an offer, they want you. So by the time you get your offer for a position, it means that the university actually wants you to go there. And since they want you to go there, you've kind of risen to the top of all of the other candidates that they've been interviewing.

So you have a lot of power because, I mean, maybe you can't ask for a house, a car, uh, you know, a separate apartment, and these kinds of things. But depending on your position, you actually can. Maybe not as you're coming out of a postdoc to a junior faculty, but if you're, you know, if you're coming into [01:12:00] a deanship or chancellorship or, you know, a distinguished professor, you can ask for things that at this point might be ridiculous, but for another person, this is like a given.

You need to give this to me or else I'm not coming.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, but those are, I'm assuming the, I think if you've reached that position, it's also clear that you have more negotiating power, right? If you will. But it's, I guess I was just, I was referring more to, I'm assuming, you know, basically I'm, you know, I'm applying for a tenure track position at a very good place and then I'm lucky enough to be offered the place and it just seemed to me like, you know, I'm just happy to be here

Brandon Brown: Yeah. Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: and they, they could hire someone else who would probably be just as good.

Uh, so that's kind of what I meant with not much power in the negotiation.

Brandon Brown: I mean, that, that's also part of, um, That's part of the imposter phenomenon, what you just mentioned. So it's really great that you just mentioned it because you, you just said, [01:13:00] I'm happy to just be here and get this offer. And maybe that's what the people on the other side of the table expect, but there's always room for negotiation.

And there's always room to ask questions and there's always room. Once you get this, you know, offer, you need to share it with your mentors and with people you trust and think about what are the things that you absolutely need and then what are the things that maybe you want that aren't deal breakers and kind of, kind of go from there.

So you do have a lot of power because at that point you are the top choice and they want you because you're the top choice. So they're going to want to, um, kind of. give you what you want to make sure that you're successful and happy.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. And. I mean, I guess that the reason I'm just slightly surprised by that is it just seems to me that, I mean, sure, if you're vastly overqualified, then it's one thing, but I'm assuming, you know, if you're applying to be at a very good place, [01:14:00] then, you know, as I said, like they might want you, but like for some random reason, because basically all the, you have like five applicants who are all basically would be amazing.

Right. Um, that, that's kind of what I mean by it's basically like, because of the, because there's no lack of alternatives, because there are very good alternatives. It's basically like, here's the offer. There's a little bit of wiggle room, but one of the other four will take it. Um, but I guess, yeah,

Brandon Brown: mean, that, that's definitely something that the person on the other side could say, that, hey, if you don't accept these terms as I've given them to you, then, um, we're not going to give you the position. Um, but that could also be a reason to like, think twice about that position. Like, wait, they. They don't want to give me, you know, How many years of funding are guaranteed?

How many classes am I going to be teaching? Um, do I have a lab? Do I have an office? Do I have, like, um, What's the [01:15:00] start up funding? Is, is two dollars appropriate for start up funds? Or do I need, like, a reasonable amount of funds to kind of get started? Do I have parking? Um, are there moving expenses? So there's a lot of things that are like the, you know, things that you should be routinely offered at least within the

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: those sounded fairly routine to me, like being a, being given an office,

Brandon Brown: Yeah. Yeah. But we can't take it for advantage, right? I mean, do I have a computer in that office? Do I have, you know, a chair or do I have a standing desk or, you know, you offered me this salary, um, can I negotiate to this amount because I'm going to be bringing in, you know, this grant with me, that's going to pay part of my salary or things like that.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. I'm assuming the best negotiation strategy though, is to have another offer. Is that true? Like, when you can say like, Wow, I've got this offer from the other unit, your rival. They're winning. And then you just, without lying and [01:16:00] making, doing the same thing illegal, you're creating the image that they're making a better offer.

Brandon Brown: Yeah, I mean having a competing offer is always useful in terms of getting a position, but then if you do mention a competing offer at the time when you are negotiating with a University then sometimes what they could say is oh, that's great. I think you should take that Take that offer because it sounds like a wonderful opportunity for you and they have more resources And we want to see you succeed and sometimes that could be genuine And sometimes it could just be like, well, you know, we're, we're just not playing that game today.

But in terms of like, uh, making sure that they keep you at a place once you're already there, and once you already have a position, having outside offer letters sometimes is the only way to really, um, kind of move up, get more money, and get more resources. Which is sad.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: [01:17:00] I've, I definitely can't share some of these stories, but I've definitely heard of some people. Having that kind of power from outside offers and using it to their advantage. Let's just keep it at that.

Brandon Brown: Yep.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Um, yeah. But, I mean, yeah, I guess also, I guess to some extent, like, you know, I guess the negotiations are still like negotiation and not playing some sort of weird mind game with the other side.

And I guess the hope is that, uh, Neither are the, well, I mean, as well as the question, right? Like I said, like, would you want to work with someone where they're just really trying to fuck with you to give you the, the, the lowest offer they can?

Brandon Brown: Yeah, and, and for, for a lot of people, for the first position at least, they think, wow, this is wonderful. I'm going to have a, I'm going to have my first, you know, real academic job where I'm going to be independent. And I'm very thankful for this. And I'm going to take whatever you offer me. But, um, you know, Passing those offers and kind of sharing it with people that you trust and asking, you know, what would [01:18:00] you think about this?

Or what are the things I should ask for? And also talking maybe with people in the department and asking about like the departmental climate. And if there's some publicly available salaries UC system, you can also kind of look to that and be like, wait a minute. You're offering me this and this is like the norm in the department, so what's going on here?

Should I, should I be questioning this? So there's a lot of things that you can do, um, to kind of help yourself with that, uh, negotiation rather than just saying, I accept whatever you're willing to give.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Do you have any, I don't know how much you can comment on this, but like one thing with salaries that surprised me a little bit is that I always thought, at least in Europe, I think it's often like you have these, I don't know, like you have these for like governmental positions, which basically.

Universities are in most European [01:19:00] countries. Um, uh, like right now I'm in ish. I'm employed at the University of Ishish, which is part of the Kwan Swish, which is, you know, it's all very official and they have like, you know, if you're a postdoc, then you're in this category, in that classification, and then that's your salary.

Right? Um, I'm assuming there's a bit more wiggle room, maybe if you're a professor. And that kind of stuff, but, uh, I was just curious whether you could comment a little bit on that because it seems to me a lot of cases this is pretty fixed, but I don't know, maybe that's a false assumption I have, and I should have a word with my supervisor.

Brandon Brown: I think, I think the different universities have different kind of norms. So, um, I could talk about the, the UC system and say that there are publicly available salaries available for every faculty and staff that work in our system, um, and also postdocs. But I would also say that there are, um, posted, um, salaries.

That are the norms for a [01:20:00] different rank and step for faculty, like assistant professor step one, two, three, four, associate professor one, two, three, four, professor one, two, three, four, five, six, and their salaries that are kind of like associated with that, because this is a state funded institution, but it doesn't mean that it stops there, because that's, that's where the negotiation could start from that base.

So if you have, you know, grants, if you, um, happen to be someone that's like famous, like a, if you're a Nobel prize winner, maybe you're not going to adhere to that baseline salary amount because you bring different value, uh, with yourself. And that's something that you're going to negotiate for. So that's like the starting point that we have.

And then, if you look at that, and then you look at the different salaries of people that are working in the system, you're like, wait a minute, the salaries don't match up. What's, what's there posted and what people are actually making? So then you realize, okay, this is all [01:21:00] negotiable.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I see. Okay. And you would recommend winning a Nobel Prize. That, that helps.

Brandon Brown: I think it could always help, as well as being, you know, part of the National Academy of Medicine here in the United States, at least for people that are going for different positions.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: You mean like being part of these like honorary, uh, kind of society kind of things? Like Fellow of the Royal Society in, in the UK, for

Brandon Brown: Yeah. Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: yeah.

Brandon Brown: Being knighted, perhaps, might be pretty helpful.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Right. If you, I mean, if you're knighted just for your research, I think you'll probably win an overpriced before that. But

Brandon Brown: True.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: yeah. Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. I didn't know. I mean, yeah, again, it would probably depend a little bit on the, on the place, but I guess just for people listening, just like putting it out there that there are these kinds of, again, like I always assumed it was kind of just like, this is what that is.

And yeah. And in many cases, it probably will be like that. Um, and if you're applying for a PhD position, I'm assuming it's just like, well, this is the money the agency has given me for this. So [01:22:00] like, that's what you're getting. Um, but yeah, that's still interesting and good to know. And I mean, I was aware that this can happen at the higher levels, you know?

Um, but I didn't realize that this could also start, you know, as soon as you're on a tender track kind of thing.

Brandon Brown: Yeah, here definitely it can, and it's always negotiable. And, um, I agree that if you are, you know, a Ph. D. student, and you are funded by, you know, the, the federal agencies, then maybe your, your stipend is this amount. If you're a postdoc funded by a federal agency, your salary is this amount. But then after that, um, for a lot of even publicly funded universities here, um, everything's negotiable.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. So one thing you wrote in your piece on building a career without big golden crowns. Uh, you mentioned that, and you also mentioned it very briefly earlier, that it can help being part of a larger team and, you know, [01:23:00] bringing your expertise to that project and helping out. I was again, surprised by that because I always assumed that no one really cares about like author 15 out of 40 basically.

And that as long, unless you're first or last, last author, again, in neuroscience and psychology, you know, that's the last author is the PI and first author is the, I'm assuming it's the same in your field, but you never know. I think in computer science, it's not that way or something like that. Yeah, it's just, I was a little surprised by that because I felt like, I mean, for me personally, this is, I don't think I would enjoy that kind of work necessarily because I think I really like having my project that I work on and that I really understand in its entirety more or less.

Um, but yeah, I was just curious, like if you could, whether you could comment a bit on that and kind of the, I, I think there's an obvious value to doing these large team. Projects, but in terms of like advancing your career, I was surprised that that would actually [01:24:00] Help unless you're the person leading that thing

Brandon Brown: Yeah, I know it's a good point. I do think that team science is important. We do have the same kind of, at least in public health, the authorship list where first and last are the most important. But when we report our publications for projects with large teams or team science, and it could be anywhere from, you know, you know, five authors to 10 authors.

We also report our contributions when we report those publications and what we did on the publications. But I do think that, you know, there's a, there's a value of not having to lead every single project that you are working on because I think we can only handle so much administrative work. ourselves.

And if we are the P. I. Of a project, then we are in charge of all the administrative work that [01:25:00]no one else has to deal with because we are in charge. We need to work with, you know, uh, the federal agency with our grants office. We need to work with the IRB. We need to work with, uh, you know, budgets and contracts and grants.

And we need to work with the different universities where the other investigators are or the grad students are. So that's a lot of work that kind of takes time away from the science side of things. that we want to do. Whereas if we work on someone else's project as in what I call or what people call team science, we get to just do the one thing that we are kind of contracted or valued to do.

Like if I want to work just on research ethics for a project on HIV, I could do that and I don't have to worry about all this other stuff. And for me, there's a lot of value in that because it's still something I care about, but I don't have to deal with the administrative burden of, um, worrying about the whole thing.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah I mean, I think [01:26:00] this might then be a little bit of a difference in terms of field again Because I think most of the things you mentioned I've never done And uh I've, you know, had my projects that where I did pretty much all of the work. Um, so maybe this is a little bit of a, I mean, I guess like in the stuff I do, it's often like you have the, the annoying thing, like the, and that what makes it complicated is that you have to be able to, you know, design the experiment, code the experiment, collect the data, analyze the data, write the paper, all that kind of stuff.

But, but that's it. Like, there's no like, Uh, I mean, you might, yeah, yeah, I've had, I have spent lots of time writing ethics applications for stuff and that kind of stuff. But yeah, I guess maybe because these are like small lab based experiments, maybe it's a little bit different.

Brandon Brown: Yeah, and maybe, I mean, one thing that you can do as a PI in your own projects or that I do is I make my own projects like a team science, where all the people that are involved in the research that I'm leading, who are also leaders in their own [01:27:00] fields and leaders in the field that, is, is kind of related to the grant that I got as PI, is they are doing a lot of this work as well.

They are doing some of the analysis. They are doing some of the writing. Um, you know, they could be the first author on the paper. Um, so there's, there's just a lot of value of not having to do every single thing for every single project, whether I lead it or whether, um, whether I'm part of it, because. All these other people that are working together on my team, or I'm working on their team, we all have value, and we bring different value to those projects, and we kind of contribute in different ways, and we can get a lot more done, I feel, by kind of working together.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. And I guess you can focus on your favorite thing.

Brandon Brown: Yeah, it's true. It's true. Yeah, like if your favorite thing is coding, or your least favorite thing is coding, someone else could do that, or you could do it if it's your favorite thing.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: exactly. Yeah. Okay. But, um, but going back to the [01:28:00]recognition thing, so that's still something that, yeah, you think is rewarded, even if in quotation marks, you only, you know, did. this part of the analysis or whatever. Um, do you

Brandon Brown: Yeah, especially if you get recognition in terms of, um, co investigatorship and part of the monies from that grant to do certain things. So it means that you're kind of, you're like kind of the local PI at your university from that grant where someone else is the PI.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Yeah. Okay. I guess that is already a bit more than I was even thinking of. Yeah. Okay. Um, yeah, I don't know. I still like, yeah. And I see, like, I think, I think I'm starting to see, like, for what I'm doing, that there's some things where I have some ideas that I just won't do. Um, because you know, there's only so much time and there's the few, the main things I want to do.

So I could definitely see like, with like heavy collaboration with other people saying like, I think this is a cool project, but like, [01:29:00] it's not as cool as my main project. So do you want to do it?

Brandon Brown: Exactly, yeah. And, and if, and if you don't have as much time right now, wait till they throw, you know, you know, teaching classes and be on these committees and blah, blah, blah. I

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: yeah, I guess one hope of me actually getting good at something now is that, uh, I mean, I'm spending most of my time right now just learning stuff, right? It's just like getting to grips with these things. But hopefully at some point I have learned something and then I can use that.

I guess I, I must've learned something already. Yeah, yeah. But it's right now I'm in the phase where it feels like I haven't.

Brandon Brown: mean, I, I think you already have a lot of expertise just from what I've seen, because I've seen some of your, um, your papers. So I looked up after you sent that email, I'm like, wow, these are, these are cool. And also related. Some of them are like, uh, puzzles. So I was like, oh, this is cool. Like I haven't heard of, of this or that puzzle, like the chicken one.

I'm like, I'm going to [01:30:00] look this up.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay, the economic games, yeah.

Brandon Brown: Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah, yeah, I know, I mean, I know I've definitely learned a fair amount of stuff in the projects, but, uh, right now I'm learning computational modeling, which is a new step, and it feels like, you know, it's one of those things where you feel like, I don't know anything here. It's kind of exciting and kind of daunting, but yeah, I, uh, give it a few months, then I think it will be a lot more familiar.

Um, So kind of moving on to the, uh, some of the other, um, I guess we've already touched on some parts here and there. Um, but some of the other career columns you wrote, um, you wrote one on doing a sabbatical, um, and the benefits of that. And, um, it was funny. Uh, so I, you know, I read the thing and I was like, Oh, let's see what you did.

For your sabbatical, right? Like what they do. And I have to admit a little bit it read [01:31:00] like you just worked regular European working hours. It's like you, you worked eight instead of 14 hours a day. I'm not entirely sure whether that's a correct, uh, characterization. But, uh, yeah, briefly, do you want to say kind of what you were maybe doing before the sabbatical and then kind of what you, why you chose to do it and, uh, yeah, what you, what you did?

Brandon Brown: Yeah, and, and, you know, I agree, the, you know, the trying to work a normal set of hours is important. And I used to be, before the sabbatical, on way too many committees and doing a lot of service that maybe I didn't, um, value as much, but that I was asked to do, just because we needed people to serve on this or that committee or, or do this service.

So the sabbatical was an opportunity to kind of reset everything, because I had, I could like, write down, here's all the activities that I'm doing for service. And these are the people I need to contact and say, hey, [01:32:00] I'm going to be gone for, um, six months. You're not going to see me, so I need to resign from these positions.

And it was, it was pretty fulfilling to be able to do that, and to just realize the amount of time that was freed up, um, that I could actually work on other things. Because during the sabbatical, you know, I didn't, I didn't stop working, but, you know, I did drastically decrease the number of hours where I was working, um, and Try to reset myself and kind of think about what's important and what what's a science that I want to pursue and what do I want to do in my career And things like that, but um, sometimes people ask me now.

Hey, are you back from your sabbatical? Yeah, but I'm I'm kind of working my sabbatical hours now Because they they don't see me as involved and as I was before and I don't want to be Uh, as involved as I was before, I think [01:33:00] there's like a happy medium between overwork and under work. People who are paying your salary definitely don't want you to under work.

If you overwork, it's a bonus for them, right? Because you were doing more. But if we're able

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: as well, yeah.

Brandon Brown: yeah. , but we have to find the balance where, you know, I have enough time for my, for my real life, my family, my loved ones, my health. And also my job, cause this is all a job. And I tried to think about it that way.

And I think we all have to think about it that way. This is a job that we're doing. Um, we're doing it cause we love it, but it's still a job and we need to make sure that we take care of our ourselves first so that we live and survive to be able to do this job.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Uh, just random quick question about, you mentioned it's, it's just a job and that kind of stuff. Um, do you think, I'm just curious, just because you come from a non academic background through your family, that kind of stuff, do you think that has an influence on how [01:34:00]you view it or not? Um, because I guess, yeah.

Brandon Brown: I think that because, because I'm, uh, like a first generation Student, because I had to kind of figure a lot of this stuff out and make a lot of mistakes. And because I asked that same question, like, um, that you mentioned for like the offer. Like I should be thankful just to have this position and asking myself, do I belong here?

So I need to like overwork and overcommit and show everybody that like I'm, I'm working 200%. So I definitely belong here. Let me prove it to you by, by overworking and showing you, but, um, doing that for a while can really burn you out. And then. It's important to also come to the realization that, you know, if I'm hit by a bus today, that I'll be replaced in everything that I do.

So I need to [01:35:00] make sure to work on the things that I care about, and to do the things that I care about, and to take care of myself in order to do this job.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Going back to the sabbatical, would you, basically what kind of forms are there for taking a sabbatical from a kind of practical perspective? I mean there's, um, I find it kind of slightly amusing almost the way you describe like that you can get these credit points as long as it's like, especially depending on how long you work there and it, you know, it really seems like, you know, parents giving their children like a small allowance or something like that that they can then spend occasionally.

Um, yeah. I mean, I'm considering doing a bit of a mini sabbatical, like, uh, between or after the postdocs thing. But that's, I guess, more of a, like, natural, also not paid, um, kind of, uh, way of doing that. Uh, I'm just curious, like, what kind of ways are there for people to take sabbaticals? Um, I

Brandon Brown: and I know that sabbaticals are becoming, um, [01:36:00] kind of normative outside of academia as well. Um, there's a couple large banks here in the United States that are doing sabbaticals for people that have worked many many years at that company and they're starting to recognize that burnout is real and then if you give people a chance to kind of pause from their work and exit the environment and like experience new things and have time to think and have time to to do all the things that they haven't been able to do that when they come back they're fully energized and they're like, uh, they bring like a fresh perspective and energy.

So I think That, that's what it did, at least for me, and it helped put things into perspective because I didn't really think before about, you know, saving myself so I could save others and, you know, making sure that I'm healthy, making sure that I spend, um, the time with people that I, [01:37:00] that I value in my personal life, as well as to focus on the things that I want to do at work and kind of drop the things that I don't really Get too much value out of but it is kind of funny.

Yeah, as you mentioned you get kind of like an allowance you get credits Based on the amount of years of work that you do So the more years that you do the more sabbatical credits that you get You still have to apply at least in my university system for the sabbatical and say Here's the things that I'm going to do during the sabbatical that way you don't just like leave You And don't, like you don't do anything, because they still want you to kind of get something out of it, um, academically.

Um, since that's the job that we're doing, especially if they're paying us. But it's a nice pause.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: seems like to slightly be missing the point. Because then it's in a way, it's just like a grant application with a very high [01:38:00] success chance. Thanks.

Brandon Brown: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the success, the chance of success is very, very high. And the paperwork burden, I would say, is very, very low compared to any grants. And you get to propose what you want to do, and maybe some things that you just have not had the chance to do, but that you really have wanted to do.

For that part, I think it's nice. I did propose a few things in mind that I wanted to do Like write a grant to focus on Participant payment and research and also write a few of the articles. I think that you Are asking me about like the sabbatical and and the nature stuff The career stuff. So that's stuff that I just didn't have time to do before that I really cared about.

And now that I'm back, I'm just going to do more of that. And when people ask me, are you back from sabbatical? I say, yeah, I'm back. It's just not going to be the same as it was before.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: You're a changed

Brandon Brown: [01:39:00] people get used to that. Yeah, yeah, it's a nice, fresh perspective, um, and you get to do, you know, things are resetting now, and now I get to do what I, what I really have wanted to do without, um, all of the expectations from before.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay, um, as a kind of, uh, last topic, uh, because I guess we have to wrap this up at some point too, um, you've, uh, yeah, things you've wanted to do includes, I believe, your farm, uh, which is, uh, I believe, a separate column again, um, um, Yeah, tell me a little bit is actually first question you had on your, on your, uh, on your, um, university website, the, you have a banner photo, which is of lemons.

I was curious. Is that your, uh, is that from your farm or is that just because it looks like it could be something that, um, that you took from your farm and upload, but I don't know what your farm is about, like what, [01:40:00] what you grow there. Um,

Brandon Brown: I mean, we do have, we do have lemons. Let me just check and see which one that I have for the banner. I think that's a standard banner from the university. But we do have, we do have a couple lemon trees. We have, um, you know, over a hundred, uh, orange trees. We have, um, avocado trees. We have figs. We have plums.

We have pomegranate apples. Pretty much, you name it, we probably have it. Mangoes. Strawberries, Tomatoes.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: uh, plants or also animals.

Brandon Brown: Chickens. Yeah, we got chickens, so we got fresh eggs everyday.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Nice. But, uh, actually, is is it smart to have avocados? I thought they like suck up a huge amount of water and you're in California. Is that a, are you contributing to a problem there?

Brandon Brown: We, um, so the place where I live, It's known as, um, The Greenbelt. [01:41:00] And there's a lot of growers here. So this is like the place where, um, a lot of the oranges and a lot of the citrus was grown in Riverside originally. So there's like, um, water rights for folks that live here to make sure that the trees are well hydrated.

Um, so we get a discount price on, um, very cheap water to make sure that all the trees are, um, kept healthy, which is nice.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay, I mean, otherwise it's not much of a farm. You can't get water.

Brandon Brown: it would be very expensive. Yeah. Yeah.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: is, uh, so what's the, I mean, to give people like a bit of an idea of like what it involves to have a farm. I mean, uh, I mean, I grew up with, uh, we had like a small in our garden, like, uh, my, my, my, mainly my mom kept like a few, you know, growing a few vegetables in the garden kind of thing.

Um, but it seems like yours is on a pretty, quite different scale. Um, You know, we had like four fruit trees in our garden that the birds would always just get [01:42:00] before Before any before we could get any of it Um, so yeah, what's the work involved in caring for citrus fruits and avocados and chickens and

Brandon Brown: I mean, it's daily. Um, I, I could look out my window right now from, from the office where I'm at home, and, um, I see trees and plants and squirrels running across the, the yard and, um, So, obviously, it is a lot of work, and sometimes it can be overwhelming with like weeds and gophers and rats and bugs, but it's always worth it because those things right there are just the downsides of living here, and the benefits are always worth it.

Kind of really endless. I could do, I mean, it's like choose your own adventure. I can go outside and pick fruit off of the trees or veggies off the raised beds and just eat. I could have breakfast and lunch and dinner here and then cook up some fresh eggs and have that meal. And how many people [01:43:00]could say that?

And I know that I'm super deeply, um, fortunate to have, you know, this life, um, with my partner here. And I get forced exercise every day. outside, watering, harvesting, feeding, um, and hoeing. Not necessarily in that order, but there's, there's a lot to do. Um, but it's hours, hours of work every day that, that I, um, enjoy most of it.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Most of it most of the time. Yeah, do you i'm assuming also it tastes way better Um, because I remember the my I my landlord once uh in in when I was in heidelberg They had like some sort of like with some other people they shared like the small little like plot of land somewhere where they you know grew the stuff and they had strawberries and man like good straw I mean I keep forgetting like berries in general like how good good berries taste but I think I think for there it's also the case that you know they can grow them to taste amazing rather than to have something that [01:44:00] you know grows quickly and is good to transport and all this kind of stuff so I'm assuming the stuff you make also probably tastes way better than what you can get in a normal store

Brandon Brown: It tastes way better, um, the only downside sometimes is what you mentioned in that the, the birds or the, the little bugs can start to attack things once they get super ripe. So we just have that for our peaches that are now a bit, um, overripe. So now the bees and the bugs are kind of enjoying them, but the good thing is they'll just clean, they'll clean the tree.

They'll eat the whole, the whole peach. So that's kinda, that's kinda nice. One thing I don't like is when the squirrels go up and eat like a few bites off of an avocado and leave it there. And then it falls and like, that's a ruined avocado. Like, come on, squirrels do better. Finish your avocado.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: I hope you catch the squirrels and just hold the avocado opposite them like, like what you did, you ruined it. Um, okay, what's the, one thing I [01:45:00] found kind of interesting, what you wrote is that it sounded to me, uh, in the column that a lot of the benefits from doing this farming. I mean, you mentioned like I think right at the end was like obviously a lot of the benefits you can have from other stuff also, but it sounded to me that a lot of the benefit was kind of like a cardio kind of exercise where you, you know, you have this like repeated actions that are They're not like super hard to do.

Um, but they're just kind of you have it's it's it's a little bit exhausting and a little bit of work to do And it's just this kind of like monotonous repetitions of something That can often be very beneficial when people go, you know running or cycling or whatever Um, I mean it sounded to me like it was a lot like that

Brandon Brown: Yeah, I mean, definitely there is a lot of monotonous repetition and, um, you know, the water flows down the furrows. And then a week later I need to. take care of the weeds in those furrows. So that's, that's monotonous. And there we, we have like, um, [01:46:00] like two acres of, of that. So there's, there's a lot of space to walk.

Um, and some days I'll get like, uh, 30, 000 steps and that's a lot of steps, right? I mean, cause what, what did they say now that, you know, people need to get 10, 000 steps at least just to kind of be active, especially us in academia, cause we're sitting a lot. Because we need to be in front of the computer, or in the lab, or doing something like that.

So it is kind of forced, um, exercise, but it's also healthy. I mean, to be able to, to be forced to go out and walk, and to kind of see beauty, I think it's, uh, it's nice. Heh.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: and are you planning on expanding it or like doing other things or like what's the You How does, how does that work? I mean, one question I also have for this relates a little bit to this, is that I often find it difficult to have a hobby that I don't kind of turn into a job. Because as soon as I start [01:47:00] something, I tend to, at least in my opinion, might be completely wrong, but in my opinion, get fairly good at things relatively quickly.

So then I, then I start getting ambitious about it. And then suddenly I'm like stressing, stressing myself out about like what I want to achieve for this thing. Um, I'm curious, like, can you do that with farming too? If we're like, I'm going to do 110 orange trees next year or whatever.

Brandon Brown: I mean, definitely you can. Um, the, the orange trees, for example, these are, you know, over 40 years old and they take a long time to, to grow. So that would be like a long term commitment to plant more of those trees. But we could, uh, you know, build more structures. We could immediately get different animals.

We could plant, uh, new plants and vegetables. Um, we've planted some smaller trees, uh, recently, like, um, Like a Pakistani mulberry, and we're waiting for it to grow and to produce fruit. So just the, the time that it takes and the nurturing that it [01:48:00] takes, like harvesting and feeding and all that stuff. It's, it's pretty rewarding at the end when, you know, you see the thing fruit that you've been nurturing over a year, two years, three years.

It's pretty amazing.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: So at the end of each interview I ask my guests the same three questions. The first is, what's a book or paper you think more people should read? Can be famous, not famous, old, new. Just something you think more people should read.

Brandon Brown: The Alchemist, I think, is a book that I think, um, that I enjoyed reading or listening to. I actually listen to it as a, kind of like a book on tape when I'm outside. And I like the idea of kind of pursuing, um, someone pursuing their personal legend, at least in the story. Maybe hopefully not to ruin the story where the, the person decides to be a shepherd instead of a priest as their parents wanted, and then kind of going after their, their [01:49:00] treasure and how we're meant to pursue things that kind of bring us joy and fulfillment or that we've always really wanted to do.

And I think for a lot of us, we're here because of that. Like we're, we're pursuing our dreams. We're trying to make a difference and make a contribution. So I think that's one really. Great book that I, that I enjoy.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay, at the rare occasion where I've actually read what people recommend. It happens, it doesn't happen often. Always makes me feel slightly special. Second question is, what's something you wish you'd learned sooner from your Private life and work life, whatever you want, but basically something where you think, you know, having learned that a bit sooner would have probably helped you out and maybe like how you learned it or what you did about it.

Brandon Brown: I think how, how important nature is. So when, sometimes when I describe what I do to family members or friends here, and they, they see like the, the scope [01:50:00] of, of work that's involved, they get kind of overwhelmed. Um, with, with kind of the space, like, how do you, how do you do this? How do you do this? Like, there's, there's so much to do.

I'm like, well, it's, you know, nature, I get to be in nature every day. I get to contribute to the growth of, of all these, you know, like trees and plants and animals, and it's, it's really amazing, but maybe in my career, at least, that it's important that we're all replaceable. So I think I mentioned if I get hit by a bus today, then, um, I'm going to be replaced by, uh, you know, maybe the end of the month on all the duties that I currently have.

And things will continue to move forward at the university and in research and in everything without me here. So that's why, um, it's kind of important to, um, Pay attention to our own health and wellness and happiness, um, in our personal life rather than just only focusing on, on [01:51:00] work.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: And nature is a good way of doing that.

Brandon Brown: Absolutely. And I know that, um, there was even been some studies showing that, um, if you have a window that overlooks something like a tree or plants that it's beneficial to your health. And, um, I totally agree with that. And in the place where we used to live, we had a window with a view of another structure and another window with a view of like a But now I have a view of just nature and I do feel more, um, grounded.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Yeah. Yeah. Um, final question. What's, uh, yeah, I mean, it's always. Because I just started a postdoc. The question is kind of to people who are finishing a PhD, starting a postdoc. Any advice there to some extent, I guess we already, you already gave some throughout the interview, but maybe now in a slightly more explicit form.

Uh, yeah. Any [01:52:00] advice for people in this kind of period.

Brandon Brown: Yeah, I would say for those kind of maybe finishing a post hoc or going into a post hoc, ask lots of questions of your mentors. Um, ask about, you know, negotiating. That's a big thing that, um, We have to do really in every career that we might pursue, but that we're not really taught how to do and everything's negotiable.

Um, also kind of what to expect in academia. So we might not have the best idea of what the next step might be in our career. Maybe we've had really beautiful pictures painted of what it might be like, but there's always some, you know, pros and cons of, of what the next step might entail. And it's important to go in there with kind of eyes wide open and expectations being, uh, reasonable because there's no perfect job.

There's no perfect team. There's no perfect, [01:53:00] uh, boss. There's no perfect setting, but, um, it's important just to go in with, with eyes wide open.

Benjamin James Kuper-Smith: Okay. Then with that, thank you very much.

Brandon Brown: Alright, thank you.